Yearly Archives: 2017

Citadel: Forged with Fire – Structure Upgrading & Material Swapping Trailer

Citadel: Forged with Fire launches a new update, improving the game’s construction system! The update includes:

  • Material Swapping: Swap any structure piece to a different material with the click of a button, no more tearing down and starting from scratch. Navigate the material you want in the Build Menu, scroll to the recycle icon, and click on the piece you want to change.
  • Tower Upgrading: Each turret tower has been given two more levels of power that increases their strength and alters their behavior.
  • High Powered Attack Towers: Power is significantly improved on offensive towers to provide greater covering fire  – fully upgrade your tower and see what kind of devastating damage you are capable of!
  • Defensive Towers: Beware friend and foe! Allies will benefit from upgraded defensive turret towers as they provide healing to any friendly players within their radius. Enemies will apply nasty damage over time to any raiders who may set foot on your claimed land!
  • Bux Fixes: More bugs fixed and gameplay tweaks!

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus: How is this Controversial?

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - Main Image

Editor’s Note: Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this, how is this a “controversial” game? Do those alt-right wackjobs not realize that Wolfenstein has been about killing Nazis since 1980? This franchise is a year older than me. And every single game has Nazis that get blown to bits by awesome guns. I cannot be certain that this is not the alternate reality. I will endeavor to make this as spoiler-free as possible, so there are things I won’t discuss. Surprise!

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - Engel

There is nothing … NOTHING redeemable about General Engel.

Oh man, where to start. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is one of the first sequels in this entire franchise that I can remember. Most of the other Wolfenstein games are simply different missions with a similar goal: Destroy the Nazis and whichever asshole’s in charge of them. Generally guys like Deathshead. But the current line of Wolfenstein games create an actual timeline, with three games that are linked, in The New Order, The Old Blood, and The New Colossus. It’s a coherent story with a very compelling, if not terrifying idea: The Nazis ended World War II with an Atom Bomb on New York City. America surrendered, and became apart of Nazi Germany. The year is 1961, and BJ Blazkowicz is back, on his way to America to free his homeland from the tyrannical grip of the Nazis. The actual game starts with BJ’s youth (I placed it roughly in the ~1920s) and it’s very hard to watch. I appreciate that, but I won’t spoil it. Suffice it to say that I empathize with the rough upbringing of Blazko. You also have to make an impossibly hard decision at the start and someone must die. But whichever one you pick will change how the story moves, what your first major gun is, how people treat you, etc. I won’t spoil more than that, but it does matter. Both choices are awful, but you can research it if you’d like. I didn’t.

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - dual wield

Don’t worry, Nazis. I have a lead diet for you.

This series has never wavered on the evil of Nazis. Not once. Some people have asked in the past, “Why use Nazis?” and whether it’s a legit question or an attempt to normalize that kind of evil rhetoric, here’s a simple answer: Fantasy monsters are evil, but they aren’t real. Nazis are a very real, very palpable evil. It’s easy to their effect on the world at large. The Nazis and their Swastika are a symbol of evil. It’s a modern, easy-to-recognize evil and there aren’t many people that have no idea who they are and what they did. But this game takes place right after The Old Blood, and to say the least, BJ Blazkowicz is not in such great shape. I mean, the tutorial stage takes place in a wheelchair! No matter what condition BJ “Blazko” Blazkowicz is in, he does his best to get some guns together, and obliterate any Nazi in his path, or to sneak up on them with a hatchet. That’s probably my favorite kill in the game: Sweeping a Nazi’s feet from under him with a hatchet and chopping the back of his disgusting neck. So you wheelchair your way to freedom, and learn the importance of stealth and leaning around corners. Sure, you can run-n-gun your way around, but it’s going to burn all of your ammo and you’ll probably die a lot.

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - You're on Fire

Chestnuts roasting over an open … wait, wrong holiday.

That happened to me a bunch, by the way. I have a hard time not just leaping into a corridor, dual-wielding machinekraftwerks, unloading shells into the testicles of Nazis. Yeah, I placed way more cockshots than headshots. But they’re both heads, so both should count. They make it a point to tell you that leaning around corners to shoot is very important, and I recommend you heed it. As a point of fact, the Nazis control this world. There are always more Nazis lurking if one of the officers relays an alarm (if you’re seen, if you attack them, etc). The stealth-kill from the Hatchet isn’t fast enough though. If you hatchet them, they can still cry out and the button in the top middle of your screen turns red and Nazis pour out of every inanimate orifice.

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - Favorite Scene

One of my favorite visuals in the game.

A very important bit of advice that I learned far too late, is this: When you get your first upgrade for your weapons, put it in your pistol. I don’t care how rarely you use it. Put a silencer on it, and shoot every Nazi officer in the back of the head. It will make your life so much easier. Most rooms in the game seem to have at least one of these officers, who can turn it into a bullet hell, as you dodge and kill every single Nazi fast enough. I cannot stress enough the need for stealth kills on those guys. There are tons of perks you can unlock, depending on how you play (getting x stealth kills, headshots, etc) and they are definitely worth seeking out. More power = more Nazi stopping capability. So strap on your power-armor (Yes, Blazko gets power armor. He can’t magically walk right now.), grab your guns and grenades. It’s Nazi-killing time. America needs some freedom.

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - Unnerving

This is unnerving. But I have a job to do.

One of my favorite things about this game is that you can dual-wield any gun in the game. If you equip it and take it with you, you can dual-wield it. I ran around with a laserkraftwerk and a machinekraftwerk and alternated between bullets and lasers. This game does have some kind of 1960s “future tech” like the last games had. You can recharge the lasers, thankfully. I wasn’t too wild about it at first, then I hit a Nazi with a laser and he bloody melted. That made it all worthwhile. This game is incredibly challenging, and the dual-wielding can make the game a little harder, as it’s harder to stealth with a pair of giant guns. As you work with the Kriesau Circle, a group dedicated to freedom in America, freedom from the Nazis you learn more about the cast of characters. I didn’t love all the characters, but I did think they were well-written and I couldn’t find a single redeeming factor in a single Nazi I came across. They’re right monsters. There’s tons of Nazi propaganda in the story, hidden in leaflets, journals, etc, where the enemy justify their actions, and sympathizers discuss how important it was for the Nazis to overtake America, to make it “great again”.  The more of it I read, the more unsettled I was at how familiar the rhetoric sounded.

Holiday Charity: Bullets for Nazis: 4/5:

Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus - Normalized

Do not normalize them. They are not normal. They are monsters.

There are some minor issues with the game, but they are in the optimization/menu end. Hitting J pulls up your various options/perks/tutorials/map. I desperately wish it defaulted to your map. This was a very hard game to stream though. When I played full-screen, the game would not show up on the screen. Same for Borderless-Windowed. I had to play Wolfenstein 2, in 2017, in Windowed Mode just to stream it for the Bottom Tier audience. I also had a very hard time taking screenshots of the game. Minor bugs and issues like that aside, it was incredibly fun to play. The difficulty feels forced or artificial, with the hordes of Nazis that show up whenever an alarm is called (and they will. They will happen, I promise), but you can turn up/down the difficulty as you need. The boss encounters are incredibly challenging, but always defeatable. The enemies all feel like they should. In this world, Nazis are normalized, and some even try to act like regular people, like their actions aren’t a big deal. It was jarring, but I understand it from a story perspective. The story cut-scenes are beautiful, but also horrific at the same time. This tale is a tragedy, and it’s a story of a man who has virtually nothing left, doing everything he can to stop terror. I do feel like the Nazis are almost comically evil and feel kind of inept compared to the Kriesau Circle. But I also feel that with that long in power, the Nazis probably are complacent and secure in their position. Do you need to play the last two Wolfenstein titles first? No. Should you play them? Absolutely. This is a story worth experiencing. Nazis are evil, and Blazko’s here to stop them. With bullets. Lots of bullets.

Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition Brings Every Facet of the RPG Experience to PC, Mac, and Linux

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Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition is coming on November 15th, and will come with it a pile of content, which is called the “Deadfire Pack”, inspired by the upcoming sequel, PIllars of Eternity II: Deadfire. The Deadfire DLC pack will also be available for free for all existing (and future) owners of Pillars of Eternity for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs to thank them for their continued support of the game. The definitive edition will be priced at 39.99 and includes the following:

  • The original Pillars of Eternity, a modern RPG with classic inspiration, and winner of multiple awards for its rich story, art, and world design
  • The complete, expanded world, characters, and content from The White March: Parts I & II, which adds new places to travel and quests to complete
  • All premium content originally sold with Pillars of Eternity: Royal Edition,including the original soundtrack, a digital collector’s book, an original novella set in the Pillars universe, and much, much more
  • The all-new Deadfire Pack DLC, which includes new in-game items to earn and discover, and new portraits from the forthcoming sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, releasing in 2018

For those who just want the base game, Pillars of Eternity – Hero Edition will be receiving a price reduction, down to 29.99 on the same platforms.

Bury me, my Love Prologue, Nour’s Choice, Playable Now for Free

Bury Me My Love Prologue News

The award-winning mobile adventure game, Bury me, my Love – depicting a Syrian refugee’s hazardous journey to safety in Europe, via a WhatsApp-style messaging interface – has received a short prologue, playable for free online via mobile and desktop browsers. This prologue explains aptly why Nour is compelled to flee Syria, leaving behind her husband, Majd. Her actions and choices are made clear, from the perspective of her husband. Both a great way for existing players of Bury me, my Love to learn more about the relationship between Nour and Majd, and their fraught situation, and for newcomers to introduce themselves to the themes and interface of the full mobile game, this prologue is free for anyone to play and will no doubt compel them to play further.